Touch

by Camille Picott

  Silence. Gun feels the warmth of anger creeping up his neck. Weeks of work on this mission, and all they have to show for it is a god-awful snuff video.

  “On the outside, it looks like a League extortion video,” Lox says. “Is there anything in the video that links Global to the League?”

  “We need to go through it,” Gun says. “Frame by frame.”

  Nate snorts. “Are you going to do that, bro? No way am I going to watch that thing again.”

  Gun turns to his friend, eyebrows raised. Never before has Nate flat out refused to do something.

  Nate sees Gun’s expression and holds up his hands. “Sorry, bro. I just can’t watch that.”

  Gun doesn’t respond. He thinks of the things he’s done for his father that aren’t all that different from what they watched on that video. Nate knows about that side of the family business, but has never seen it.

  Gun experiences a moment of self-loathing so wide and deep, he almost chokes on it.

  I am slime, he thinks. Out loud, he says, “I’ll do it. I’ll go through the frames.” For Sulan, he can and will do anything.

  ***

  Gun has been up for sixteen hours. Nate snores on the couch. He volunteered to keep Gun supplied with a steady stream of espressos, but he passed out around three in the morning. Gun doesn’t bother to wake him up.

  He’s poured over every frame in the snuff video multiple times. He enlarged anything that looked suspicious, hoping for something to tie the League to Global.

  Nothing.

  Not even a partial scrap of anything useful.

  Gun exhales, smacking his fists against the desk.

  Nate starts in his sleep, eyelids fluttering, then sinks back into slumber. His snoring permeates the room.

  Why have this video if it doesn’t contain anything useful? Gun rubs at his eyes, which are gritty with fatigue. On a whim, he pulls up the video code, staring blearily at the stream of data.

  What was that? He scrolls up and pauses, staring at the code. Is that . . . ? A spear of anticipation goes through him.

  “Nate!”

  “Wha?” Nate startles so violently he tumbles off the sofa. He sits up, scratching at a red mark on his head. “What time is it?”

  Gun ignores the question. “Get the twins on the line,” he says. “I think I found something.”

  When the Dread Twins are online, both of them staring out of the screen with bloodshot eyes, Gun says, “I think I found something.”

  “I hope so,” Mage replies. “You interrupted my beauty sleep.”

  “Look at the code,” Gun says, sending it to them. “The code of the video we stole out of the Collusion Underground. Do you see it?”

  Nate grabs the tablet out of his hands for a better look. The twins fall silent as they scroll through the code.

  “Damn, how did we miss that?” Lox exclaims, in the same instant Nate says, “It’s an embedded file.”

  Gun nods. “Yeah. Can one of you guys extract it?”

  “On it,” Lox says. “Give me a sec.”

  Moments tick by as Lox digs into the file. “Got it!” he exclaims. “Let’s see what it is.”

  The Dread Twins are again reduced to a tiny rectangle in the upper corner of the screen. Replacing them is a large, partial map of the United States.

  “This was embedded in the video?” Gun says.

  “Yeah.”

  The map contains states from the western half of the country. There are three red dots on the map. Two of them mark locations attacked by the League with pneumonic plague.

  “This one.” Nate taps the third dot, one marking Duncan, Nebraska. “There hasn’t been an attack here yet. Tell your father.”

  “We need to get men to that location.” Gun straightens. If they can get to the site and capture a Leaguer, they might have the evidence needed to convict Global. With any luck, this will be the intel that can free Li Yuan.

  He hurries toward the door. He’s just reaching for the handle when door flies open.

  “Gun? Gun—!” Maia nearly runs straight into him as she rushes into the room.

  Gun catches her. “Maia, I have it. We know where they’re striking next—”

  “Gun, Dad is on a rampage. There was another League attack a few hours ago. He sent Li Yuan into the hole.”

  Gun feels the breath leave his body. He will never be able to look Sulan in the eye if something happens to her mother.

  “Another League attack?” Nate asks. “Where?”

  “Duncan, Nebraska,” Maia says.

  The room falls silent. Nate looks as stricken as Gun feels. Mage and Lox duck out of camera, leaving an empty sofa littered with trash on the screen.

  “What?” Maia asks. “What happened?”

  All their hard work. All the planning, the programming, the battle against the cybermercs. All to get a tiny sliver of intel.

  Useless intel.

  Gun stalks out of the room to the elevator. Nate and Maia are on his heels. They follow him to the weapons room on his floor.

  Gun grabs several tranq guns and stun batons.

  “You’re going to get Li Yuan?” Maia asks.

  “I will not leave Sulan’s mother in the hole with administers of influence.” He grabs a string of flash grenades for good measure. “I should have gotten her out of here long before this.”

  All this time he tried to play both sides. He wanted to help Li Yuan and placate his father at the same time.

  There’s no middle ground with William Anderson. His mistake was thinking he could forge a middle ground.

  “I’m an idiot,” he snarls. “I thought if I could get enough intel to indict the Winn’s, he’d let her go. I should have known better.”

  “Gun—” Maia begins.

  Gun forestalls her with a hand. “I won’t play in Dad’s field anymore.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Nate says.

  “No. You’re not going down with me. This is my fight. Maia. Make sure he doesn’t follow me.”

  He turns his back on them, exiting the mansion.

  ***

  The hole. Anderson took Gun and Maia down there on several occasions. They were tests, Gun knew, to gauge how they would react to the suffering of those unfortunate enough to end up on William Anderson’s bad side.

  He even made them watch the torture for a short while, explaining that some things had to be done “for the good of the company.”

  Maia cried every time. Gun bore it all stoically, as he knew his father wanted him to, but inside he wondered if success was worth breaking another human being.

  Deep down, he always knew what lay in store for Li Yuan Hom. He’d been desperate to avoid it, though in retrospect that was foolish hope.

  Some part of him—the little boy inside him—still wants to appease and please his father. He has to let that go. For himself, for his own self-respect, and for Sulan and her family. He has to be his own person, not Anderson’s pawn.

  There is no moon out tonight. Gun avoids the light pools cast by the intermittent street lights, preferring to stay in darkness. He passes the occasional merc patrol, but the streets are otherwise deserted.

  The hole is located in the southeast corner of the compound, in the merc headquarters. No one stops Gun when he enters. No one questions the unusual array of weapons hanging from his belt.

  Access to the sublevels of the base does require use of a retinal scanner. Gun widens his eye, pausing to let the red beam scan him. His father will know who it was that freed Li Yuan. He doesn’t care.

  When the elevator door opens on sublevel three, he comes face-to-face with a smear of blood on the wall.

  Adrenaline spikes through him. His mind races. Is this a Global infiltration? Sabotage from within?

  Why hadn’t he brought a real gun? Tranq guns and shock batons? What had he been thinking?

  He drops into a crouch and pulls out a tranq gun, feeling like an idiot as he eases down the hall. Small puddles of blood dot the
smooth concrete floor.

  At the first corner, he finds a body. It’s an Anderson merc, a man Gun recognizes as Todd Olson. He experiences a flash of regret for not knowing anything other than the man’s name. Going forward, he will make it a point to know more than names.

  Gun retrieves the weapon from the man’s belt. He continues down to the hall. More blood is smeared on the walls and floor.

  He’s almost reached the hold when he finds two more bodies, both of them dead and stripped of their weapons. They lie beside the open door of the hole.

  Gun stands still, listening beside the doorway. His mouth goes dry at the thought of Li Yuan lying dead inside.

  Everything is silent. Somewhere in the distance is the drip-drip-drip of a leaky pipe.

  And then he hears it. The softest whisper of a boot against the floor. Honing in on that sound, he whips around the doorway, weapon raised.

  Li Yuan crouches inside the door, smeared with blood and dirt, a gun in each hand. The room around her is a littered with four other bodies. One of those bodies belongs to his father. Li Yuan isn’t even breathing hard.

  No Global infiltration. No sabotage. Just one, superhuman woman taking on seven mercs by herself. And winning.

  Here he’d been worried for her safety. He need not have bothered.

  “Gun.” At the sight of him, Li Yuan sheaths her weapons. “You came.”

  He nods, feeling foolish. “Yeah. I was going to free you. Guess you didn’t need me.”

  “It’s the thought that counts.” Her gaze travels across the room to the unmoving body of William Anderson. “I didn’t kill him,” she says. “Though I can, if you want me to.”

  “No.” Gun shakes his head. However much he despises his father, he doesn’t want to see him dead.

  Li Yuan shrugs again. “I’m leaving now, Gun. It was nice to meet you.”

  As she steps past him, he says, “You could have left anytime. Why didn’t you?” He feels like an idiot for not realizing it sooner.

  She pauses, looking over her shoulder at him. “I spent the last two decades under the thumb of Global Arms. I needed to know what life was like at Anderson Arms before moving my family here.”

  His chest contracts.

  A test. This had all been a test.

  “You know I can keep her safe, don’t you? All of you.” His voice comes out as a croak. He aches at the thought of Sulan going somewhere else.

  Her voice is gentle when she answers. “I don’t doubt your sincerity, Gun, but your father is a sadistic lunatic.”

  He nods, throat tight. “I know.”

  “That being said, I can see life here isn’t bad. Anderson is good to his people. It’s other people he throws to the wolves.”

  Gun nods again.

  “I can’t say the same for Global.” Her face hardens. “No one is safe from the Winns, most especially their own people.” She reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. “I’ll be seeing you, William Gunther Anderson, Junior.”

  And with that, she turns and disappears out the door.

  23

  Test

  The only sound it the tap-tap-tap on his father’s index finger on the desk. Anderson is bruised and bandaged from Li Yuan’s take down. Gun stands before him, awaiting whatever sentence Anderson has drummed up for him.

  What will it be this time? Sensory deprivation room? Make him walk barefoot on a deserted stretch of road for hours on end? There’s no telling how creative his father will get.

  “Li Yuan Hom is gone. But you already knew that.” Anderson stops tapping, leaning back to lace his fingers over his stomach.

  Gun shrugs. No use trying to deny it. He’d called in a medical unit to retrieve Anderson from the hole, but didn’t accompany him to the hospital. Rather, he stayed down in the hole to supervise the cleanup. Five of the seven mercs were dead. The remaining two were severely wounded, but would recover.

  “Li Yuan is loyal,” Anderson says. “Steadfast. She will be a good operative when she joins us.”

  Gun blinks. “What?”

  “She will be a good operative when she joins us. I’d heard she was one of the best. I needed to see if she lived up to her reputation. I have to admit, she stayed in the suite for so long I started to doubt her. I was looking forward to seeing how she held up under a little torture.”

  Gun stares, incredulous. “You mean, this was all a test?”

  “Everything is a test, son. Haven’t you learned anything from me?”

  “What makes you think she’ll ever come back here after the way you treated her?”

  “Please.” Anderson waves a dismissive hand. “This is the best place for her family and she knows it. Why do you think she tolerated my treatment of her? She wanted to snoop around and see what life here was like. I gave her a glimpse. Within reason.”

  His father knew all along Li Yuan was testing the waters. How had Gun been so blind? For some reason, this makes him angry.

  “I can think of half a dozen corporations who would welcome the Homs,” he says.

  “That’s your fear talking, son. You’re worried your girl is going to end up somewhere else. Don’t worry. Li Yuan will bring her here.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  Anderson smiles. “I am indeed. How else do you think I’ve survived so long in this world? I was made for crazy.”

  Gun stares at his father, unable to respond.

  Anderson is more than happy to fill the silence. “You showed you care for our people. You could have taken live weapons into the hole to free Li Yuan. You didn’t.”

  “Five men died down in the hole!”

  Anderson’s nostrils flares. “Those men were all exposed to high levels of radiation on a recent mission. Their time on this earth was limited, and they all knew it. Death by an esteemed mercenary is preferable to wasting away in a hospital bed.”

  “So they were prepared for Li Yuan’s attack? They knew she would try to kill them?”

  Anderson’s silence is his answer.

  Gun shakes his head. “You took away their freedom of choice.”

  “I gave them quick, honorable deaths. There isn’t a man among them who would have preferred to die in a hospital bed. Just ask the two survivors.”

  “If you’re trying to convince me you did a good thing, it’s not working.”

  Anderson sighs. “Judge me all you want, son. Someday, you’ll stand in my shoes. These will be your choices to make. I can only hope you will make wise ones.”

  Gun leaves his father then, turning over everything he’s learned. One thing is for certain: no more blindly following his father’s orders. No more trying to conform to his father’s warped worldview. From this day forward, he will be his own person.

  “I will not let this crazy world define me,” he mutters. “From now on, I’ll define the world.”

  Whoever he turns out to be, he can only hope to be someone Sulan won’t be ashamed to call a friend.

  Epilogue

  It takes almost three full days for the effects of the Dream Dust to wear off after the Vex battle with Claudine. Gun has ample time to wonder if he is indeed a person Sulan considers a friend anymore.

  He’d been worried about his father hurting Li Yuan and driving a wedge between him and Sulan. The bitter truth is that he never needed his father’s help. No one made him lie and deceive Sulan. He did that all on his own. The wedge that existed was his own making.

  “Any more vomiting?” Nate backs into the room, carrying a tray of food. He pauses inside the doorway, giving a loud sniff. “Yep. Still smells like vomit in here.”

  Gun chucks a pillow at him, purposely missing. “I haven’t puked since the day before yesterday.”

  “Just checking.” Nate sets the tray down on the bed and promptly snags a piece of buttered toast before plunking into the nearest chair. “Seriously, bro, how are you feeling?”

  Gun eyes the breakfast tray, but doesn’t take any of the food. He’s been sedentary for three days. The thou
ght of shoveling food into his body does not sound appealing.

  “Dr. Fitz says I’ll be cleared for activity tomorrow,” he says. “At least I had some reading time.” He gestures to the stack of old Spider-Man comic books on his nightstand. Rereading them had been like visiting an old friend. “Hope you haven’t been too bored with your free time.”

  Nate shrugs, looking down at his shoes.

  “What’s up?” Gun asks him.

  “I called my sister.” Nate shrugs again, like it’s no big deal.

  Gun raises his eyebrows. “And? How did it go?”

  “She was mad at me for taking so long to return her calls.”

  “And?”

  “She told me to stop pouting like a two-year-old.” Nate fails at suppressing a self-conscious smile. “We just talked about stuff. She likes the new compound she’s living in, but misses her friends here.”

  “Think she’ll move back? She knows my father will take her back into our compound, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your mom? How is she?”

  “She wasn’t home when I called. But I left her a message. I . . . think I want her to call me back. Is that stupid?”

  “Dude, she’s your mom. No, it’s not stupid. The only stupid thing is you giving her the silent treatment all these months.”

  “Sort of like you never asking Sulan out? That was stupid too, bro.”

  Gun sighs, leaning back into his pillows, ignoring the constant ache he feels from Sulan’s absence. “We’re both idiots. Guess that’s why we’re friends.”

  “Guess so. Are you going to eat this?” Nate points to the oatmeal.

  Gun waves a hand. “Dig in. It’s all yours.”

  They banter after that, gossiping about everything and nothing. There’s a brightness in Nate’s eyes that Gun hasn’t seen in months. It’s nice to see his old friend back.

  Nate is working his way through Gun’s orange juice and second piece of toast when someone bangs on the door. Without waiting for an answer, Anderson barges in.

  “Nice to see your appetite is back,” he says, eyeing the empty food tray. Gun doesn’t bother telling him Nate was the one who ate everything. “Come, take a walk with me to the R&D building. Some fresh air will do you some good.”